Our new Moodle Teaching Next Level MOOC bridges the gap between basic use of Moodle and advanced online teaching skills.
For several years now, educators new to Moodle have benefitted from our twice-yearly facilitated MOOC, Learn Moodle Basics, allowing them to experience Moodle in a collaborative, social constructionist environment both as a student and as a teacher setting up their own practice course. Last year we launched a self-paced course, Moodle Teaching Basics, unfacilitated but always available, meaning that anyone unable to make the four-week MOOC is now able to get started teaching with Moodle at any time.
But where to go from there? Advanced Moodle practitioners have the Moodle Educator Certification, a paid program available from our Moodle Partners, but this requires both real-life teaching experience and more in-depth knowledge of Moodle. At Moodle HQ, with our mission of “empowering educators to improve our world”, we want to help teachers go beyond the basics of how Moodle activities work and start exploring how Moodle LMS supports good online pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning. So we’re delighted to announce the launch of Moodle Teaching Next Level on the site learn.moodle.org. We asked Education Manager Mary Cooch to tell us about this new, self-paced course.
When will Moodle Teaching Next Level be launched and who is it for?
It will be open for self-enrolment on 12 April 2021 and you can join at any time. It’s not facilitated, so you can take as long as you like to go through the materials, although we recommend a minimum of 20 hours. It’s aimed at anyone who has learned the basics of teaching with Moodle – perhaps with one of our own courses, perhaps with a Moodle Partner or their own organisation – and just to make sure the course is right for you, we set you a short quiz at the beginning.
What are the topics covered?
Because this is the ‘next level’, we assume you already know how to set up a Moodle course and add most of the activities, so we don’t focus that much on the technical aspects of course creation, apart from exploring some advanced tools and settings such as Workshop, Lesson, Groups and Gradebook in the first section “Make more of Moodle” The other sections focus on how Moodle can help you become a more proficient online teacher:
Include your learners: Ensure all learners are able to access your course materials, whatever their devices, internet connection or personal learning needs
Engage your learners: Learn techniques (such as gamification) to engage and maintain the motivation of your learners.
Assess your learners: Enhance your knowledge of Moodle’s gradable activities and discover different types of assessment.
Support your learners: Explore how Moodle can help you support and give feedback to your learners.
Throughout the course you’ll also see references to competencies which form part of the Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigCompEdu). Simply doing this course is not enough to fully meet these, but it will give you an introduction to the DigCompEdu framework upon which the Moodle Educator Certification program is based.
Can I go straight from Moodle Teaching Next Level to the MEC?
Probably not, as you also need experience in translating what you have learnt in “Moodle Teaching Next Level” into practice before taking the MEC, but it is certainly a very good intermediate stage, and will get you used to the format of the MEC program. And even if you don’t intend to take the MEC, by going through Moodle Teaching Next Level you’ll explore case studies, pedagogical concepts and be given practical tasks to try out, all of which will help you develop your expertise.
How are we assessed and what do we receive if we complete the course?
Regular quizzes test your understanding. You can take the quizzes as often as you like but you must get at least 80% and there are no hints :) Anyone who completes the course will receive a Completer badge and you also have the option to purchase a Certificate of Completion which includes the minimum recommended number of hours.
Do I need my own Moodle site or course or do you provide sandbox courses?
No, although it does help if you can practise in a course as a teacher. While we don’t offer sandbox courses in our self-paced MOOCs, we do encourage you to get a free MoodleCloud site to experiment in.
Sign up for Moodle Teaching Next Level today on learn.moodle.org
